Many good CAD (computer-aided design) software packages support design, such as SOLID WORKS, UG NX, and PRO/ENGINEER. Also many good packages provide analysis, such as WORKSPACE5, DARVIM 2K, and ADAMS. Yet design and analysis packages rarely work together well to meet the specific needs of robot designers. For maximum efficiency, a robot designer might want to modify a hardware design and test it in software 10-20 times in a workday. Yet modifying a robot design on one software package, then converting and validating it on another can take days of effort, and when finished, the designer may not have access to the information really needed for robot analysis, such as control torques and sensor data. This inefficiency is expensive and time consuming, and it is detrimental to the quality of robot designs.
New ways for connecting the existing well-solved pieces of the robot design cycle as well as new robot-specific analysis are needed. Constructing a part in a CAD program is largely solved. Simulating rigid-body dynamics with differential equations is largely solved. A challenge lies in connecting these and other components and integrating human input in an efficient way.
Another challenge lies in adding all the capability needed by roboticists. Most commercial packages are not tailored to robotics. To make a complete product that will find wide acceptance and use, new algorithms and software should support robotic workspace, control, manipulation, sensor, actuator, and locomotion analysis. The human interface should provide robotics-tailored data, described using robotic terminology. A new software framework that integrates commercial capability where available and adds new capability where needed may change the nature of development for the entire robotics field.